Thursday, April 19, 2018

The US has been at war for almost 20 years now. Why haven't we see a REAL antiwar movement?

Question.

The US has been at war for almost 20 years now. Why haven't we seen a REAL antiwar movement.

I've been chewing on this for a couple of days and I have a few points but not the complete picture so I'm tossing it to my readers.

What have I come up with?

1. Supporting the troops has become confused with supporting Middle East policy.

2. A "professional" military has allowed most of the public to check out of the burden of the war.

3. False tax cuts/bad policy has allowed the public to check out of the war.

4. In the same vein, Bush's call to "keep shopping", when the public wanted to know what they could do to support the troops gave a false sense of civic responsibility.

5. Irrational patriotism. Calls to "stay the course" when it was obvious that the policy was failing successfully muted the objections of those that new better.

The list goes on but that should help spark discussion while giving you an insight into what I believe is going on.

One thing is certain.

This is a dangerous game the Pentagon and policy makers are playing.

For the first time in our nation's history we are engaged in multiple conflicts with a small military and at the same time facing global competitors that appear to be getting stronger everyday.

Additionally if you look around we're facing some of the same pressures that we did during the 60's. From my seat we're seeing increasing racial strife, a still too slow economy for many, and general household insecurity all around.

We're living thru it so we can't tell or rather don't have proper visibility on how 20 years of continuous war is affecting our country but I'd bet body parts it isn't for the good.